20 MINUTES TO MASTER ... FENG SHUI. Simon Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ example, visualize fast flowing water passing a sharp point (see Figure 6). As it passes the point, the water begins to swirl, sometimes forming whirlpools. This also happens to air when wind passes a sharp corner. The flow of Chi is exactly the same. It swirls around as it passes a protruding corner in a room. This swirling energy is called Cutting Chi and occurs wherever you encounter a sharp protruding corner. In restaurants and hotel lobbies, I have noticed that if a chair is positioned in front of a protruding corner, generally people are reluctant to sit in it. Placing yourself within this swirling spiral of energy will tend to make your own energy swirl around, causing you to feel more disorientated, and more likely to feel confused. Over a long time, such as sleeping in front of such a corner, the constant immersion in swirling energy or Cutting Chi could eventually lead to ill health.

      Apart from protruding corners there are other influences on the flow of Chi to consider. Doors, windows, stairs, the shape of a building, the local landscape and the direction a building faces, will all in their own way influence the movement of Chi around your home or office.

      Part of a Feng Shui practitioner’s job is to identify how these features are affecting the flow of Chi and then find ways to create a more harmonious flow of Chi. Often, some areas of the home will be experiencing fast, turbulent energy, whereas others may be very still and stagnant. I aim to create a situation where the Chi is most helpful to what a person wants to achieve in each room.

      When I began Feng Shui, I was fascinated to observe how restaurants and shops in locations with poor Feng Shui would fail. When I talked to people working in one such building they described it as though the building itself had bad luck. I have had clients who asked me to help because their marriage was breaking up, only to find that they bought the home from people who were selling because they were getting divorced and that these people had also bought from a divorced couple before them. A building that has three generations of people living there, ending up in divorce, needs careful consideration before moving in.

      Similarly, I have clients who have bought a home that has been repossessed by the bank from owners who have run into financial difficulties, only to find that they themselves have run into financial difficulties.

      My own experience confirms that the home you live in carries its own particular movement of Chi, and that this influences your own flow of Chi, which in turn affects your emotional and physical well-being. By enhancing the flow of Chi in your own home, you can make positive changes to yourself, which in turn lead to a greater ability to realize your own dreams in life.

CHAPTER 2

       YIN AND YANG

      Chinese Medicine and philosophy, the origins of Feng Shui, are based on the principles of yin and yang. These two words are used to describe everything around us and how this affects us. I assume that when these principles were being developed, people were mainly interested in farming, their basic material needs and health. Yin and yang created a system whereby they could observe what happened in the past and then use this to predict the future.

      Let me give you an example. At the time of a full moon, the Chinese would say we become more yang. This means we are more active, want to go out and generally are more social. Now, centuries later, this can be confirmed by statistics; insurance companies will confirm that at the time of a full moon car accidents increase, the crime rate in New York goes up and admissions to casualty wards increase. Conversely, at the time of a new moon the ancient Chinese would say that we become more yin, that is more peaceful, more spiritual and more relaxed.

      So, armed with this simple piece of yin and yang information, if we wanted to organize a really wild party when would be the best time? The full moon of course. At this time people will be more likely to want to go out and have fun.

      The whole point of all this is to be able to do more with your lives with less effort. After all, each of us only has so many years left on this planet, so why not make the most of them? Imagine yourself at the age of ninety. One day you come to the point where you know you are dying and yet you feel very peaceful, relaxed and content. As you look back over the years, you know you lived your life to the full. You can’t help but think what a wonderful life you have had. Yin and yang are the tools to help you achieve that. Why be the sort of person who holds a party on a new moon, puts a lot of time and effort into it, only to find that half the people turn up and even then all they want to do is sit around and talk about themselves. The poor hosts get depressed because they think they can’t organize a decent party, yet all it was, was bad timing.

      The same approach can be applied to food, exercise and our homes. Every home will have areas that will actually help you achieve your aims. Whether you wish to relax, be more inspired, or have increased energy, the secret is to find the place that has the atmosphere and environment to support you.

      Yin and yang are the first of the essential points to be grasped in understanding the frameworks used in Feng Shui. To communicate and learn from experience, we need some kind of framework. For example, simple maths, like addition, provides us with the framework to do everyday activities such as shopping. We use it for counting the number of groceries we need, adding up the cost, or adding the weights of ingredients. In this context it works and we use it every day to our mutual benefit.

      However, adding numbers together only works some of the time in real life and is often only an approximation. For example, if we take two drops of water and add them to another two drops of water, we only have one drop of water instead of four. If we were to weigh the drops of water, we would find that each drop is in the process of changing its weight. It may be evaporating or absorbing dust. In any case, our weighing machine will also be in a process of change, expanding or contracting, depending on variations in temperature. In the end, we can only say that if we take four drops of water, each weighing one gram, and put them all together, we will end up with approximately four grams. Yin and yang is a similar framework. By studying yin and yang, you can learn more about your environment and how it affects you, in a much shorter time than if you were to try solely by your own random experiences. Once you and a friend have a basic understanding of yin and yang, you then have the language to discuss your experiences of your environment to a much deeper level.

      The point is, all the ideas in this book are here to help you understand what is going on around and within you, and to then be able to communicate with others. Once you try to think of any of these frameworks as rigid absolutes, they become difficult to understand. Just as trying to explain mathematical addition to someone who is putting drops of water together will seem ridiculous, the same is true of Feng Shui. Fortunately, the principles of Feng Shui have been around for thousands of years, plenty of time for people to try them out, question their validity and develop their practical application.

      My advice is to keep an open mind, try to first understand the principles as frameworks and then test them in real life.

      The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine tells us that by 2600 BC the Chinese people already had a great interest in the subjective effects of their environment. It describes how they had evolved the concept of a pair of interactive polarities present throughout nature, which they termed yin and yang. Nothing was seen to be absolutely yin or yang, but simply more yin or more yang when compared to something else. For example, resting is a more yin state than working, but more yang when compared to sleeping.

      In ancient China it was observed that in the morning, as the sun comes up, people are naturally more active and alert, a more yang characteristic than resting. In contrast, during the afternoon, people generally feel more mentally orientated, physically passive СКАЧАТЬ